The Canadian real estate investor Oxford Properties Group has acquired a life science park in Cambridge, UK for £45 million as part of a strategy to service the global life science sector. The park, 310 Cambridge Science Park, is currently let to AstraZeneca Plc until November 2023, after which the company will move to new headquarters in the area.
Pieris Pharmaceuticals Inc has entered into a new collaboration involving its proprietary protein technology in order to develop therapies for respiratory and retinal diseases. The agreement with Genentech, a member of the Roche Group, is the company’s fifth partnership since its founding in 2000, and the first in ophthalmology.
Numab Therapeutics AG has raised CHF 100 million ($111.48 million) from a Series C financing round, enabling it to accelerate development of its lead antibody programme for multiple cancer indications. The latest financing was co-led by new investors Novo Holdings and HBM Partners. It comes a little over a year after Numab completed a Series B round for CHF 22 million.
Dyno Therapeutics Inc, based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, has raised $100 million in a Series A financing round to expand its technology platform for designing adeno-associated virus (AAV) vectors for gene therapies. The company is using artificial intelligence to improve the performance of capsids, the cell-targeting protein shells of AAV vectors.
MiNA Therapeutics Ltd has entered into a research collaboration with Eli Lilly and Co to develop candidate drugs using technology for restoring normal cell function by activating gene expression. MiNA’s small activating RNA (saRNA) technology will be used to research up to five drug targets selected by Lilly.
The French vaccine company Valneva SE has raised $107.6 million from an initial public offering of shares on the US Nasdaq market, enabling it to accelerate development of candidate vaccines to prevent Covid-19 as well as Lyme disease. The company also has a prophylactic vaccine in development against the chikungunya virus, which is prevalent in Africa, Asia and India. The company’s American Depositary Shares began trading on Nasdaq on 6 May.
Valneva is also listed on Euronext Paris.
A topical treatment for diabetic macular oedema is poised to enter Phase 3 development following the closing of a $57 million Series C financing round for the developer, Oculis SA of Switzerland. The treatment, OCS-01, is an eye drop formulation of dexamethasone, a corticosteroid, which if approved, would be the first topical treatment for a retinal oedema.
Mogrify Ltd has raised an additional $17 million in venture capital bringing the total generated for its Series A financing round up to $33 million. The proceeds will be used to advance programmes in immuno-oncology and ophthalmology as well as in vivo reprogramming therapies for retinal degeneration. Mogrify has developed a direct cellular conversion technology that enables researchers to transform any mature human cell type into any other without going through a pluripotent stem cell state. This is a new approach to drug discovery and development.
Technology that integrates clinical trial data from patients with dementia and machine learning has received financial support from public and private funders in the UK. The company responsible for the technology is Cumulus Neuroscience Ltd (formerly BrainWaveBank) of Belfast, Northern Ireland. On 4 May, it announced receipt of £6 million from the Dementia Discovery Fund, the Future Fund and the charity, LifeArc.
A new US company with technology for developing tissue-targeted gene therapies for multiple diseases, has launched with $140 million in venture capital financing and collaboration income from AbbVie Inc. Capsida Biotherapeutics Inc is based on technology developed by Viviana Gradinaru and colleagues at the California Institute of Technology in the US.